Stephen Hawking dies aged 76

Physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76, his family has said.

Key points:

Stephen Hawking was dubbed one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein

He was given only two years to live when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1963

Professor Hawking's worked ranged from the origins of the universe, through to the prospect of time travel

He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of this morning (local time), according to a statement from his family.

"His family have kindly requested that they be given the time and privacy to mourn his passing, but they would like to thank everyone who has been by Professor Hawking's side — and supported him — throughout his life," the statement said.

His children Lucy, Robert and Tim said they were deeply saddened by their father's passing.

"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world," they said.

"He once said, 'it would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love'. We will miss him forever."

The University of Cambridge will be opening a book of condolence at Gonville and Caius College for those wishing to pay tribute to his life.

Professor Hawking sought to explain some of the most complicated questions of life while himself working under the shadow of a likely premature death.

In 1963 he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and was given two years to live.

Professor Hawking went on to become a researcher at the University of Cambridge and Professorial Fellow at the Gonville and Caius College.

He was a Lucasian Professor at the university from 1979 to 2009, a position previously held by Isaac Newton in 1663.

Professor Hawking was dubbed one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein.

His work ranged from the origins of the universe itself, through the tantalising prospect of time travel to the mysteries of space's all-consuming black holes.

But the power of his intellect contrasted cruelly with the weakness of his body, ravaged by the disease he contracted at the age of 21.

Hawking was confined for most of his life to a wheelchair. As his condition worsened, he had to resort to speaking through a voice synthesiser and communicating by moving his eyebrows.

The disease spurred him to work harder but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages, he wrote in a 2013 memoir My Brief History.

In the book, Professor Hawking related how he was first diagnosed: "I felt it was very unfair — why should this happen to me?

"At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life."

Hawking shot to international fame after the 1988 publication of A Brief History of Time, one of the most complex books ever to achieve mass appeal, which stayed on the Sunday Times best-sellers list for no fewer than 237 weeks.

He said he wrote the book to convey his own excitement over recent discoveries about the universe.

"My original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls," he said.

"In order to make sure it was understandable I tried the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it."

Associate Professor Alan Duffy, a research fellow in the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing and lead scientist of the Royal Institution of Australia, said Professor Hawking enriched the lives of millions with his latest science and cosmic perspectives.

"Professor Hawking was an inspiration to me to become not just a scientist, but a communicator of that science," Professor Duffy said.

"His work as a cosmologist and discoveries in black hole physics were legendary.

"His best-known prediction, named by the community as Hawking Radiation, transformed black holes from inescapable gravitational prisons into objects that instead shrink and fade away over time."

"Through it all, of course, his illness made his achievements near-superhuman," he said.

"How he manipulated Einstein's equations in his mind when he could no longer hold a pen I can't even begin to imagine."

Hawking's two concepts of time

Since 1974 Professor Hawking worked extensively on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

As a result of that research, Professor Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of time: "real time", or time as human beings experience it, and quantum theory's "imaginary time", on which the world may really run.

"Imaginary time may sound like science fiction … but it is a genuine scientific concept," he wrote in a lecture paper.

Real time could be perceived as a horizontal line, he said.

"On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience — but in a sense, it is just as real as what we call real time."

In July 2002, Professor Hawking said in a lecture that although his quest was to explain everything, a theory of determinism that would predict the universe in the past and forever in the future probably could not be achieved.